On one recent visit I had to be careful not to tread
on people's toes. Swedish and Yugoslav experts bustled
everywhere with drills, compressors, and coiled cables.
More recently, I saw tourists troop by, brought for quick
visits by a hydrofoil boat on the Nile; it makes the 170
mile trip from Aswan in five hours.
Salvage Problem Challenges the World's Experts
This mammoth shrine was carved into the mountain
3,200 years ago by the best stonemasons of the Pharaoh
Ramesses II. It honored the sun god Re-Harakhte and
Ramesses himself, like all Pharaohs a god in the eyes of
his contemporaries. A similar but smaller temple near
by was dedicated to Hathor, goddess of love, music, and
the dance, and to Ramesses' wife Nefertari.
Abu Simbil is the most challenging salvage oper
ation of them all. Engineers throughout the world sub
mitted ingenious schemes to rescue the huge sandstone
masterpiece from the rising waters. An Italian engineer
proposed to lift the temples some 206 feet-the height
of a 19-story building-with hydraulic jacks. A French
proposal would have floated them to ground above the
projected water level in immense concrete tanks.
One British plan called for enclosing the temples
within a hollow pyramid. Another envisaged a thin
membrane dam around the front of Abu Simbil: Eleva
tors would lower visitors to the hollow bottom of the
dam's wall for an underwater view of the temples.
All but one plan, however, proved unsatisfactory or
prohibitively expensive. In the end, UNESCO, upon the
recommendation of the United Arab Republic, accepted
the plan of Swedish consulting engineers which calls for
dismantling Abu Simbil's temples and reconstructing
them on the desert plateau overlooking the present site.
KODACHROMES( N.G.S.
Water-stained temples of
Philae Island, just above the
present Aswan Dam, rise
forlornly from Nile mud.
Each year impounded wa
ters cover walls once gay
with color. As late as the
sixth century A.D ., ailing pil
grims sought the Temple of
Isis (right) for healing. Or
nate kiosk at left, still un
finished, rose under Roman
rule. Three dikes are planned
to keep the Nile's waters
from submerging the island.
Cars on rails beside the
road will haul away a year's
deposit of silt from the chan
nel. Donkey carts head for
the landing with cargo.
Kindly Bes, Egypt's pro
tector against evil, plays a
harp on a Philae column.
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